"The Ubuntu developers are moving very quickly to bring you the absolute latest and greatest software the Open Source Community has to offer. This is the Ubuntu 7.04 Beta and it comes packed with a whole host of excellent new features including the released GNOME 2.18, the 2.6.20 kernel and much more. Ubuntu 7.04 is the most user-friendly Ubuntu to date and includes a ground-breaking Windows migration assistant, excellent wireless networking support and improved multimedia support."

Well, what you get is a - more or less - polished Debian unstable, a brown GUI, an init that is supposed to be fast (it isn't really much faster than the standard init), and a few applications. But halt, there is more, a "ground-breaking Windows migration assistant" ...

Have you tried the new init in 7.04? It was my understanding that 6.10 brought the infrastructure changes, but that 7.04 was supposed to bring some of the heavier optimizations and performance improvements. It would be a bit disappointing if it turns out about the same.

"
A combination of several different things have meant we've deferred this for feisty.

I've made a lot of major changes to Upstart, and in the process discovered opportunity for more changes that massively improved its usability. I decided to spend the time getting the daemon right before trying to get the replacement scripts right; since daemon improvements help here too.

The changes to upstart also mean that prudence requires more testing of the daemon in its current state, before trying to unleash the full power on everyone.

While mapping out the scripts for the boot sequence, we discovered several bugs in the current boot sequence and in other people's attempts at making a udev-based boot sequence. We decided to solve these with the new scripts, rather than make the new scripts bug-for-bug-compatible. This takes longer to implement, and also requires a lot more testing.

We could've got all this done for feature freeze, and spent the remaining times beating out some of the bugs; but we'd've ended up with something we weren't truly confident with.

Instead we've decided to spend more time getting things right, so that when the replacement packages are installed, everything works even better than now.

The intent is that these replacement packages will be available from around the time of the feisty release, and that people who want to try them can install them by just adding the URL to APT.
"

It makes sense to postpone introduction of upstart-based scripts in Feisty, for the sake of stability and bug avoidance a non-beta release until this is ironed out.

As upstart is still in development, new 'production' scripts should be worked on more after the upstart API becomes reasonably stable to avoid reworking and regression testing them each time the interfaces are updated.

It is excellent that upstart scripts (if it can still be called script) 'beta' package will be available as optional replacement (and really simple to install) for folks who are at first ready to risk reliability of their system. i expect many to use them because of a reduced boot time, not to mention dynamic behavior & good flexibility unlike old init scripts - dynamic tasks/services are currently handled with udev, HAL, GDM and other dispatchers, now those can start to use upstart events (on Ubuntu) to send such signals, as upstart is a framework designed just for that (either natively or using dbus).

There was some fuss on how HAL and Network Manager already handle dispatching. Of course they are still very useful and should retain their role of a "smart daemon" with has hardware info/configuration/state database, but now their child processes (in HAL those are called addons) can become normal upstart services - maybe even startable by other means, e.g. static configuration if user wants to do it that way - e.g. both static and dynamic FS mounts could be handled with single upstart job(or task, whatever) script.

Well, wireless may just work for you, but that's not what the overall situation is, looking at the number of posts on Ubuntuforums with various complaints regarding wireless (or NetworkManager in general).

Well that's the thing. People want to use Debian as a desktop, but it's either too old (stable) or too unstable (even "testing" doesn't work right all the time) and now they can with Ubuntu's six months releases. I think that's a great thing.

I've got Debian unstable for few years and in my opinion it is more stable than any ubuntu,gentoo,fedora etc.

Depends what you're using your system for and what kind of apps you're running.
Windows can be somewhat stable too if it's not connected to the Internet and all you use is Notepad and Calculator.
I'm no expert on Debian, although I have "Etch" running on my laptop, but from what I hear the Debian devs can't get stable out the door because of some unresolved bugs, so how can unstable be more stable then?
It just doesn't make sense to me.
So, yeah, if you're running Flux with a couple of terms and vim then I supposed it'll be stable allright.
Other than that you're full of shit.

Yes!
I've been running linux for about a year. Though I'm a neewbee I tried Kanotix (good), Suse (first XGL experience, killed by a bad drive), Ubuntu - Breezy/Edgy (my first kernel panic, and it was bad...). I'm now running Debian Sid 64bit with KDE and it's great! Stable but a little bit slow! This is the first distro that do what I tell it to. I've set up my first chroot, got dual-screen working (computer CRT and HDTV), all the web-plugins and it never crashes!

What *I* got was (besides minor bugs):
- a fsck because I didn't check for 49710 days (directly after a fresh install)
- FS corruption errors in the fresh-formatted ext3 partition
- the unability to read the exact fsck error messages because after finding the error, the system insisted to restart after 5 seconds without the ability to cancel that
- the inability to report these bugs because the forums don't make it clear where to post bugs, and launchpad simply seemed down after loading a few sites from there.

The FSCK process at boot is one of the few things I really hate about Linux. Compared to Windows it scares people, and I don't blame them. I get more tech support calls about fsck than anything else and a graphical progress bar with clear instructions would make so many people feel more comfortable.

I haven't used Windows much since Windows 2000, but doesn't Windows also have something similar to this? There's been several instances where for some reason or other the chkdisk/scandisk (or whatever it's called) ran during boot up with a message no more ominous than fsck's. What's the difference?

I think it's more likely to be fsck 1.40 (wip) that's the problem. I had a forced check too (supposedly my partition wasn't checked in over 10 years ). Unlike previous releases Feisty is not stable enough during testing to be used comfortably.

some bugs I've encountered (Herd 5 updated everyday):
-restricted drivers manager broke xorg.conf after installing nvidia drivers (fortunately there was a backup and the rest was matter of changing "nv" to "nvidia")
-desktop effects manager just doesn't work, I get no window borders
-migration assistant didn't copy my Firefox settings/bookmarks
-cracking sound on my Audigy CrapSomething
-VLC from repos had broken interface until recently
-Azureus from repos is STILL broken, now at least it runs but is not very stable and locally installed versions behave bad as well
-some Gnome menu entries can't be edited (I don't like long descriptive names)

The restricted drivers manager is a bit of a pain but I think you'll find most of that fixed before it comes out of beta. For me everything installed correctly but an uncommented line in /etc/default/linux-restriced-modules-common was preventing the Nvidia modules from loading. Stupid I know but to fix it they just have to put the # symbol back. It is beta after all ;-)

Desktop effects manager is VERY beta, but that said mine runs stable enough to be typing this very reply, cube workspaces, wobbly windows and everything. I know that the xorg.conf files needs some special settings for nvidia to play nice. For example you should use 24 bit colour depth. E-mail me if you'd like a copy of my xorg.conf. It works so well I was able to play World of Warcraft under Crossover with half the screen spreading onto another cube face! Useless, totally useless but technically impressive.

I always use Azureus to download Linux ISOs and I've never had a problem with it so that one suprises me.

{ Well, what you get is a - more or less - polished Debian unstable, a brown GUI, an init that is supposed to be fast (it isn't really much faster than the standard init), and a few applications. But halt, there is more, a "ground-breaking Windows migration assistant" ... }

... whereas what you get with the all-new Windows Vista is - more or less - a memory-hungry XP "upgrade" that breaks many drivers and applications, a performance cut, and no applications. But halt, there is more, you get rights-removing DRM, "improved" (read stricter) WGA, virus checker that doesn't find many viruses, UAC that drives you insane and which you turn off after it bugs you too many times ... and you get a large bill, and you find that you also have to buy more RAM.

At least Ubuntu 7.04 is an improvement on its predecessor, unlike some other new versions of Operating Systems that have been released earlier this year.

Anyway, this isn't a dig at Ubuntu, because they do seem to be doing something right.

But I'm going to wait and see what peoples upgrades go like, because every release seems to have some huge show stopping bug, enough to render machines unbootable, and blow apart network cards and all their configurations. Both of which I've had happen, and it makes it hard when that happens and it's the only machine you have, or you were using it on a server off-site.

If they can overcome that, awesome, just seems to be too much work in making it look pretty lately rather than the important things such as making it easily upgradable. Which seems to be where a few Distro's have problems in.

my upgrade using Ubuntu's upgrade assistant was absolutely painless.. except for having to download like a jillion files to do the upgrade.. the servers were jammed and it took a few hours even with DSL. Everything still works.

I'll be patient and wait til apr.19th./20th. to download the full release,
before upgrading my Ubu 6.10
Interesting to hear your horror stories about Ubuntu upgrades.

Personally I found Ubu 6.06 to be a trial,
and so I quickly upgraded to Ubu 6.10(much better,more "ready")
but then I wiped the HD and did a fresh system install, from scratch!
- which is kinda what I'm thinking I'll do this time again, after a big backup!
Or should I?

Like you said... wait to see what happens with others, before jumping in.
Again, the trick is to be patient!!

I just installed Kubuntu yesterday using the new update-manager for KDE and I've got to say I'm pleased. For a beta release it's well polished. There were the usual problems with Nvidia drivers not being present but for the first time for me, they installed right from packages with no tweaking needed.

Compiz needed an extra package or 2 to work with KDE but, once again, I'm pleased with it. Something about this release feels more complete and well structured. I'm going to keep using it throughout the week and time will tell if my opinion was formed too quickly.

For the first time, Konqueror is playing Flash pages, and I didn't even have to set anything up manually. It's these little things that really make a difference to me as I've been using Kubuntu since Dapper for my daily computing and I don't feel there's much missing from it.

prism 2 usb wifi still does not work. i've tried it in ubuntu kubuntu and mint. and compiz in fiesty brings my laptop into a crawl. I dont have this problem in PClinuxOS. this is just for info.

I found that, at least with 6.10, you do need to blacklist the orinoco and related drivers first. hostap will be used once you blacklist orinoco. For myself, hostap works so much better (besides the fact that it has WPA support which orinoco lacks)

Okay this is interesting but seems like a Ubuntu promotion article directly from the Ubuntu folks. Not one critical word in the writeup. The url says it all "onlyubuntu.blogspot.com". It is not a preview in the sense of a pre-release review but instead a preview of the features, etc. FYI.

i've been using faisty now for about a month and i have to say i'm very happy with the current status. i have to say that everything works out-of-the-box. logitech quickcam, all other usb devices, bluetooth devices. although i had some graphics driver probles (ati), that was solved in about 10 minutes and now everything works superb on my samsung 831bw. guys, that's the best os i've ever seen and i think linux is now a bit more mature than windows.. ok, besides for gaming

Distribution of the win32 codecs has NOTHING to do with patent law and everything to do with copyright law.
Only in countries completely lacking copyright law would it be legal for anyone to distribute parts (codecs in this case) of Windows without permission from MS (or whoever has the copyright for a specific codec dll).

{ Distribution of the win32 codecs has NOTHING to do with patent law and everything to do with copyright law. }

Are you quite sure about this?

How does that work?

If I write original code to implement a codec, how do I violate anyone's copyright? My software is not a copy, it is an original expression of the decode algorithm.

AFAIK, copyright law protects the expression of an idea, it does not protect the idea itself.

I think you may have it backwards.

{ Only in countries completely lacking copyright law would it be legal for anyone to distribute parts (codecs in this case) of Windows without permission from MS (or whoever has the copyright for a specific codec dll). }

OK, that is about the distribution of the Windows dll files. With you now.

OK, how do you reconcile this with Realplayer or Quicktime codecs? Suppose I install Realplayer for Windows running on Linux under Wine. I then get codecs downloaded from Real ... then I point my Linux media players at those codec files.

OK, I have no contract with Microsoft, but my contract with Real is just as valid as any Windows user running Realplayer.

In the case of bcm43xx ... I have just as much bought the card as any Windows user has, so I have the same rights to run the driver as any Windows user does.

"OK, how do you reconcile this with Realplayer or Quicktime codecs? Suppose I install Realplayer for Windows running on Linux under Wine. I then get codecs downloaded from Real ... then I point my Linux media players at those codec files. "

This is not a problem since you are not distributing the files. Distributing, however, is exactly what Ubuntu would have to do and that's the crux.

{ This is not a problem since you are not distributing the files. Distributing, however, is exactly what Ubuntu would have to do and that's the crux. }

Debatable.

According to most Windows fanbois who try to use FUD about multimedia codecs to bash Linux, you simply can't legally run codecs on Linux.

That claim is FUD ... whatever the situation might be concerning distribution and Ubuntu, the fact remains I can legally get (one way or another) an implementation on Linux of almost every codec that a Windows user can run.

More specifically, the codecs are in the libavcodec package, which is part of ffmpeg.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libavcodec
"libavcodec is a free software/open source LGPL-licensed library of codecs for encoding and decoding video and audio data; it is written in the C programming language. It is part of the FFmpeg-project and many free/open source applications rely on it."

I can get some of those (without having any permission from Microsoft) from any of the sources listed here ... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Media_players
... that run on the Windows platform and which are not "Windows Media Player".

"I can get some of those (without having any permission from Microsoft) from any of the sources listed here"

Right, but you are STILL not legally allowed to (re)distribute them. This is not about getting the codecs on your system, it's about Ubuntu distributing them which is something they can not legally do in most cases.

{ Right, but you are STILL not legally allowed to (re)distribute them. This is not about getting the codecs on your system, it's about Ubuntu distributing them which is something they can not legally do in most cases. }

Half right. You are correct in saying that Ubuntu can't legally distribute some Win32 codecs to users in some countries (OK, just the US) because of the draconian laws there.

But you are not correct in saying "This is not about getting the codecs on your system, it's about Ubuntu distributing them" because the original post that kicked off this discussion in fact said this:

"I was wondering if Ubuntu 7.04 will somehow find a legal way to use Win32 Codecs?"

... which is clearly all about a legal way to use the Win32 codecs on Ubuntu. There is a legal way, which is ... don't get them from Ubuntu, get them instead from a source that is legally allowed to distribute them and then just use them on Ubuntu.

I don't know about Win32 Codecs, as you're probably referring to the package by the same name which we should all try to avoid, but Linspire have said they are going to move to Feisty as the base system. I'm not 100% on the specifics but Linspire do ship codecs for all sorts of things that other distros aren't able to pay for.

Wait and see what Linspire offer, it might just be everything you need to move all your friends and family away from Windows without the headache.

I don't know about Win32 Codecs, as you're probably referring to the package by the same name which we should all try to avoid

Why would you avoid using a package with win32 codecs? When I surf the web I want to be able to go to any site that I feel has interesting content and access all media available on it.

While I understand it would be great if the media came in non-proprietary standards, the reality is that useful sites do use windows media, quicktime, real media, etc.

I don't want desktop linux to be less of an experience than using Windows. I want it to be *more* of an experience so that I can enjoy all media formats plus get rock solid performance and security. Imagine trying to convince a new Linux user to only use specific formats of media. They would switch back to Windows in a second. Too much hassle.

>>OK, install that using Wine under Linux, and then find where the codecs have been put ... now you have a legally obtained set of Win32 Codecs on your Linux install.

Hmmm, interesting. I installed PowerDVD. It installs a bunch of DLLs, the most promising of which is: PdcMPG2V.dll. You're saying that a Linux media player can just use those DLL's straight from a Windows program if I copy them to a certain location?

Thanks for the replies. I will be truly impressed if bcm43xx works as well as you make it sound. The included bcm43xx driver on Ubuntu 6.10 requires firmware installation, and usually still doesn't work right after that. And the ndiswrapper method means no signal strength metering, as it's always stuck at 100%. (No, I'm sure my signal is NOT really at 100%, a quick boot of Windows is enough to prove that.) Maybe the new Devicescape stack actually works. Of course none of these problems are really Linux's fault. I swear, I will never buy another Broadcom product until they open up their device specs.

I've always been a bit skeptical of Ubuntu. It seemed like a nice enough distro but I could never figure out why so many people loved it so much. With Feisty I'm finally seeing some really nice stuff going on, and may start recommending it to new Linux users.

{ Now, if someone would just clean the copyleft code (GPL etc.) out of Ubuntu, we might have a serious commercial-quality OS here. }

I assume that you were simply trolling here ... but on the off chance that you weren't, I'm very curious ... what exactly is wrong with GPL code?

... please bear in mind that if you just were to download, install from liveCD and then use Ubuntu/Kubuntu, then even in a commercial setting you would not have the source code on your system, so there is no more chance of somehow "corrupting" a proprietary programming project than if you were running Windows ... and it goes without saying that for the vast majority of enterprise scenarios there is no chance of even that worry because the firm in question is just not in the business of writing and selling code.

This statement makes an obviously incorrect claim, without any support ... and in the end it even fails to actually state a criticism of GPL code. "There's no comparing? Really? Why not?"

BTW, for companies that do not write any code themselves, the only difference between GPL, LGPL, et cetera and FreeBSD, freeware and public domain is that, since it is more attractive for developers to release code under LGPL, GPL (because the developers get other contributions made back to the project), then that in turn means there is far more code available and that code which is available has more development effort behind it.

As for commercial code, it is more expensive, it carries risks associated with its licensing in terms of BSA audits, and it is not itself able to be functionally audited by parties independent of the vendor so it is of questionable quality and it may in fact contain functions which are not in the best interests of the company using the code.

For companies that do not write code themselves, there are no rights given up if they use GPL software. Period.

For companies that do write code, there also are no rights given up if they use GPL software (because they never ever had any right to appropriate that GPL software for sale in their products in the first place).

{ better a cost in dollars than in rights }

Contrary to your claim, the cost in rights of using GPL software is actually zero. You give up no rights at all that you otherwise would have had.

Also, if you do want to use GPL source code in your product, then get in contact with the author (and copyright owner), and you may be able to negotiate a deal to be able to do just that under an alternate license. It will cost you though.

Finally, if you buy a copy of commercial software (in binary executable form), typically you also get no right to use the code from that software in your own product, even after you paid for a license to run the software. To buy a right to use the commercial source code in your own project will cost you a huge capital amount, and typically a per-copy royalty as well.

I downloaded the alpha version of 7.04 and found it not yet ready for primetime. Of particular interest is the Xen hypervisor support, since I use a lot of VMs, both Linux and Windows 2000, hosted on either Linux or Windows 2000.

I created a VM of 7.04 alpha and then tried to boot it. Result: total lockup of host machine. Required a hard power off to get the machine back. I am speculating that the Xen supervisor may not be checking to see if in fact it is actually within a virtual machine, but that is just speculation at this time.

I decided to install 7.04 alpha native on a laptop and encountered other problems.

First, the partitioner would not allow me to use the entire 60 GB hard drive, but insisted on creating a 477 MB hard drive instead. While it is sufficient to boot 7.04, it is not sufficient to install the 550 updates via Synaptic.

At that point, I went back to 6.10.

I will download 7.04 beta and see if any of these problems have been addressed.